Our business was founded on the premise that proactive automated communications can offload much of the day-to-day interactions that businesses have with their customers and can be just as effective as live agent communications, at a fraction of the cost. This message is still true, but as we all know, technology will never fully replace personal human interactions. There is a still a great need for agents in the call center today.

Customer communications and their expectations have only become more complex in the last 15 years with all the different channels a customer has access to. With the rise of instant access to available information via a mobile device, customers now expect companies to proactively alert them to changes as well as reach them through digital channels such as text messages and smartphone notifications.

Rising customer expectations make it absolutely essential for businesses to have an integrated approach to their customer communications. This helps companies see a single view of all customer interactions and enables a multi-pronged approach to reach customers with the right information at the right time.

A Multi-Pronged Approach to Outreach

For instance, by incorporating Live Agent Campaigns in conjunction with proactive messages, companies are able to drive better results. And, at Varolii, everything we do as a service provider comes down to results and adding live agents to the mix helps drive even better outcomes. Before, it never made sense for us to develop a premise-based dialer. But, with major advances in cloud computing and in our efforts to enable the full spectrum of customer interaction technology, we can now offer a Cloud Dialer that is arguably better and more flexible with greater scalability – all at a lower cost than premise-based solutions.

Ultimately, it’s that integration factor that drives the best outcomes. We are seeing impressive results using live agents and automated messaging as a blended strategy. For example, we have built logic into our system to know when to leave a message and when to transfer to an agent. If voicemail picks up, we can leave an automated voice message and send a follow-on SMS (if it is a cell phone). If we get a live answer, the call is sent to a call center agent to engage directly with the consumer. In some cases, we can see a 40% uplift in customers taking action (answering the message and talking to an agent) offering this blended strategy of proactive outreach and agent communications.

It’s an exciting time for call centers. Check back in the future for more examples of how companies can drive better results with a blended approach to customer service.